City could relax some rules for vacant buildings

that may mean more lax regulations on vacant buildings. abc-7’s maria garcia reports: 00:56 the economic impact on small businesses from regulations cost a lot of money a lot of money out of pocket el paso taxpayer rene nevarez says sometimes too many regulations prevent business owners from renovating old buildings. 01:12 it’s not only about public safety, but its also about local economy and local economic development that’s why the city is considering changing the rules for vacant buildings. right now a vacant building owner has to give the city a timeline of when they’ll renew, demolish or occupy the building. but the city is considering no longer requiring that. 01:37 we don’t want to dictate the market also: the city considering lifting the requirement for sprinklers if the vacant building is safely secured. 05:01 it’s really an unfair burden on them to install a sprinkler system just to protect the vacant building and then have to come back and reconfigure what kind of occupance they end up bringing in 01:49 well a lot of people have the opinion that businesses in downtown should open up and a lot of people want them to open up but we have to make it reasonable for these buildings to be improved in such a way that it’s not going to overburden the building building owners – that will have more leeway if city council adopts the changes to the local law. the council will consider the ordinance changes next month. after hearing of the reports